On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Blood Death Knight in World of Warcraft —
Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.3. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+.
If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area
(such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Tranquil Mind
and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow
players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of
combat.

2.

Tier 1 (Level 56) Talents for Blood Death Knights

Blooddrinker is an active, channeled ability with a 3-second hasted
duration and a 30-second cooldown. While channeling Blooddrinker, you drain
health from the target (it loses it and you receive it as healing). While
channeling Blooddrinker, you can still parry, dodge, and use defensive
abilities (notably, Death Strike does not count as a defensive
ability).

Rune Strike is a melee attack that deals moderate physical
damage and generates 1 rune. The cooldown of Rune Strike is reduced by runes
you spend, allowing the ability to scale with haste. Rune Strike has two
charges, and activates the global cooldown when used.

In this tier, we recommend Blooddrinker for purely single-target
DPS, and Heartbreaker for other circumstances. Even with
only occasional opportunities to cleave, Heartbreaker will quickly pull ahead.
It is also worth noting that mismanagement of Blooddrinker, even slight
mistakes like clipping the last tick, will cause it to be inferior to
Heartbreaker.

.

Rune Strike can be considered in very niche scenarios where you need
additional runes, with a significant rotational overhead. These cases
are few and far between, and so far, there has not been one in Battle for Azeroth.

Tier 3 (Level 58) Talents for Blood Death Knights

Ossuary causes your Death Strike to cost 5 less Runic
Power when you have 5 or more Bone Shield charges. Additionally,
Ossuary passively increases your maximum Runic Power by 10.

Tombstone is an active ability with a 1-minute cooldown which
consumes up to 5 Bone Shield charges. This grants you an 8-second damage
absorption shield, the size of which is based on the amount of Bone Shield
charges consumed (6% of your maximum health per charge). It also grants you
6 Runic Power for each charge consumed. Tombstone is on the global cooldown,
unlike most defensive cooldowns.

Ossuary is the default choice on this tier, and should be used in
nearly any situation. Maintaining 5 stacks of Bone Shield is not more
difficult than keeping Bone Shield up generally, and the discount to the cost of
Death Strike results in a 12.5% increase to available Death Strikes,
which is significant. Paired with the increase to maximum Runic Power, the
talent also allows you to bank a third Death Strike worth of Runic Power.

Foul Bulwark will provide an average of 6-9% additional maximum health
assuming effective play. While this is a valuable benefit, it cannot compete
with the multiple benefits derived from Ossuary. Only use this talent
if you need more effective health at the cost of healing throughput, and you have
exhausted other options, such as flasks, food, and your runeforge.

Tombstone is a moderately powerful defensive cooldown, allowing
access to a 30% absorb that snapshots, at the cost of 5 charges of
Bone Shield. Due to its operational overhead and the problem of it
being on the global cooldown, however, it does not perform as effectively as
it could, even in the situations where it is useful (taking infrequent hits larger
than your maximum effective health). It is therefore better to avoid this choice.

5.

Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Blood Death Knights

Will of the Necropolis absorbs 30% of all damage taken below 30%
health. The absorb is pro-rated on damage taken that brings you below 30%; for
example, if you were at 40% health, and took damage that would bring you to 20%,
then half of the damage taken would get the 30% damage aborption effect.
Because of this, it is fundamentally accurate to think of Will of the Necropolis
as equivalent to an approximately 13% increase in maximum health. This also
affects damage that would bring you below 1 HP, thus providing a linear increase
to effective health.

Rune Tap is an active ability with two charges that provides 30%
damage reduction for 4 seconds. Rune Tap has a 25-second recharge time, and
costs one rune.

In most content, Will of the Necropolis will be the best choice. The
passive benefit is useful in nearly any tanking scenario. It is also worth noting
that it is modelled in-game as an absorb and, therefore, unlike other damage
reduction sources in the game, the damage it reduces still counts in
Death Strike healing calculations.

Anti-Magic Barrier can be valuable when the cooldown reduction
allows you to fit Anti-Magic Shell into your cooldown plan more
effectively, or when the increased duration or size allows you to avoid the
application of a debuff.

Rune Tap can be valuable in encounters with large, predictable
spikes of damage, where additional damage reduction is required simply to
survive. Generally, the passive benefit of Will of the Necropolis will
outperform it across an entire fight, and Rune Tap should only be considered for
encounters where stacking damage reduction cooldowns is required.

Wraith Walk is an active ability that increases movement speed by
70% for 4 seconds, on a 1-minute cooldown. Taking actions during Wraith Walk
immediately cancels the effect.

The correct talent on this row depends on the encounter. Take
Tightening Grasp any time the reduced cooldown to
Gorefiend's Grasp is mandatory to execute a strategy.

Grip of the Dead should be your default choice in Mythic+, along
with any fight where there is a requirement for what is arguably the
strongest snare in the game. It is worth noting that, if you manage to
make an enemy walk into your Death and Decay at the second it
expires, it will be affected with a full 10 seconds of 90% speed reduction.

Any time the other two talents will not provide benefit during the
encounter, you should use Wraith Walk, as having two separate
mobility cooldowns gives you a much stronger mobility profile, which has several
benefits for any tank.

Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Blood Death Knights

Voracious provides 15% Leech for 6 seconds after using
Death Strike. The effect does not stack or extend on multiple uses
of Death Strike, instead just refreshing the buff to 6 seconds.

Bloodworms gives your auto-attacks a chance to summon a guardian
pet that will auto-attack your target for 15 seconds. When the 15 seconds
expires, or when you fall below 50% health, the bloodworm will be killed and
heal you for 15% of your missing health. Multiple bloodworms can be active at
the same time; you will summon approximately 5 bloodworms per minute.

Mark of Blood costs 30 Runic Power to place a debuff on your
target for 15 seconds. During that time, any auto attacks the target makes will
heal the victim for 2% of their maximum health. Mark of Blood has a 6-second
cooldown.

Bloodworms is the only talent worth considering on this tier. The
auto-attack damage dealt by the bloodworms is significant, and the defensive
bonus, while weak, is passive and is more valuable when tanking more difficult
content.

Voracious is too weak to consider taking. Additionally, the
leech effect occurs right after the self-healing of Death Strike,
increasing the overhealing rate of the healing this talent would provide.

While Mark of Blood could conceivably provide more healing per
Runic Power spent than Death Strike on weaker content or 2-3 target
sustained encounters, it will not compete with the healing from
Bloodworms and Death Strike combined. It also comes at a cost of
both rotational complexity and massive amounts of lost damage from not using
Runic Power on Death Strike. There are some niche uses for it, but they
are more down to bosses that have an attack speed increase; this talent
saw some play when tanking Pa'ku on the Conclave of the Chosen encounter.

8.

Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Blood Death Knights

Purgatory passively allows you to survive a killing blow, once
every 4 minutes. The attack that would otherwise kill you places a 3-second
healing absorption debuff on you instead. The debuff absorbs healing equal to
the amount of damage that the killing blow would have done to you. While the
debuff is active, you cannot be killed, and any damage taken is added to the
healing absorption effect. If the effect is still present when the 3 seconds
run out (meaning, if you have not been healed for the entire amount by then),
you will die.

Bonestorm is an active ability with a 1-minute cooldown, which
consumes up to 100 Runic Power. It lasts 1 second for each 10 Runic Power it
consumes, and while active, it deals Shadow damage every 1 second to enemies
around you. It also heals you for 3% of your maximum health each time it deals
damage. The heal is capped at 15%, or 5 targets hit.

In most encounters, the cooldown reduction provided by Red Thirst
will allow you to plan your defensive cooldowns more effectively, making it the
default talent choice in this tier.

Purgatory is a powerful tool for learning encounters and
recovering from mistakes. While there is a meaningful possibility you may die,
and the cooldown reduction of Red Thirst will not provide benefit to
your cooldown plan, it should be your talent choice in this tier. It is
important to recognize that as your skill level goes up, the value of Purgatory
falls significantly — experienced Blood Death Knights on well-practiced
content will rarely need a cheat death, and often in such circumstances the
benefits of Red Thirst could have been more effective in saving their
lives.

Bonestorm is a powerful AoE ability on a relatively short
cooldown. It is especially valuable in Mythic+, and on encounters where burst
AoE damage is important. The heal has the potential to be very large as well,
scaling with the number of enemies hit (up to 5 enemies). Do not let this limit
fool you — a 15% healing per second HoT is more than consequent. As such, this
talent is the default pick for Mythic+.

9.

PvP Talents (War Mode)

In Battle for Azeroth, there will be the option to go into "War Mode".
Enabling War Mode provides the following benefits:

PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.

10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.

10% more experience gained while leveling.

Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.

9.1.

General PvP Talents

The first PvP talent slot is the same for all classes and specs and provides
defense against crowd control abilities.

Relentless is a passive ability that reduces the duration of
all crowd control abilities.

Adaptation automatically clears any crowd control effect longer
than 5 seconds, with a 1-minute cooldown.

Your optimal choice while playing open-world content will typically be
Gladiator's Medallion - Blood Death Knights have access to extensive
crowd control immunity through Icebound Fortitude and
Death's Advance; Gladiator's Medallion can cover what gaps may exist
after these abilities, leaving you very difficult to control in unexpected PvP
situations.

Adaptation is also a viable choice, particularly if you do not
want to keep track of an additional ability solely for use in PvP situations;
however, most players who will choose to engage you in open world PvP will be
fully prepared to account for an automatic crowd control removal ability,
reducing its value significantly.

Last Dance is a trap talent and should never be picked. You gain
no additional uptime on Dancing Rune Weapon at the cost of one more
GCD every minute, due to the reduced cooldown.

9.3.

About Conflict and Strife

The PvP essence provided in 8.2, Conflict and Strife allows us to use Unholy Command
in PvE content. This has very little value in open world content, as
this effectively means you'll end up picking a fourth, sub-par PvP talent
in return.

Its PvE viability in dungeons and raids will also be niche, as it depends
highly on the encounter, and you sacrifice a lot to choose it.

10.

Changelog

13 Jan. 2020: This page was reviewed for Patch 8.3 and no changes are necessary.

26 Jun. 2019: Updated for Patch 8.2.

22 Jan. 2019: This page has been reviewed for Season 2 and no changes are necessary.